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30 Day Paleo: Day One – Stop Eating Processed Food

Looking to make healthier choices? Perfect! This is Day 1 of 30 of my 30 Day Paleo Plan. For more information on 30 Day Paleo as well as 30 Minute Paleo, check out the get started page. Post each day on your 30 Day Paleo journey to Twitter or Instagram and show me by tagging me with @dranthonygustin — get after it!

It’s Day One on the 30 Day Paleo path! Congratulations on your commitment to making better choices from here on out. Use the information, tips and tricks in these posts to be a healthier, stronger, improved version of you.

You don’t have to choose to do every day in order, but the plan is designed to be implemented that way. Take your time with these steps, and absorb all of the information you can. If you need to revisit or try some of these steps multiple times, that’s fine too. The best way for you to improve your train of thought is to understand WHY you should be making the recommended daily change.

If you’re already implementing the step for any given day, that’s great! You get a pass. Use the day as an opportunity to check out the associated recipe, or reflect on whether there is anything else you can improve on for that day.

What is food? Food is nourishment for your body. It shouldn’t just help the body survive, but it should provide everything the body needs to THRIVE. Food (typically) shouldn’t spoil. Food should need to be cooked and consumed, or else frozen. Food should be enjoyed. You have taste buds for a reason. These are to guide you to fresh food full of plentiful nutrients. Chemists got smart however and made frankenfoods in the labs to take advantage of this mechanism and to keep their prices low with profit high. Enter processed foods.

Why are processed foods bad for you? Your body is designed to take in things that have been grown and been part of nature. Your cells can only recognize things that occur naturally. Synthetic derivatives send mixed messages to the messengers in your body, causing it to do improper tasks. When your cells don’t do what they’re designed to do, inflammation, chronic disease, low energy, and other negative health effects come into play. Time to eradicate all of this junk.

The modification for day one is simple – If you are eating anything that is packaged, stop. Stop eating processed food. Your body doesn’t need things that don’t spoil.

Depending on where you’re starting, that might be too much of a modification for you. That’s okay. If cutting out everything processed is too hard to begin with, read the ingredient label. If you can’t pronounce any of the ingredients, don’t buy it. Stick to eating products with very few ingredients, and products that spoil. If you’re already doing that, then only use products that have one ingredient (coconut oil, olive oil, etc).

So what can you eat? At this point, don’t worry about eliminating any food groups- eat anything and everything you can that is fresh- vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, nuts, whatever. Work on eliminating foods that are clearly made in a lab and far from natural form – think packaged cookies, crackers, cereals, pop tarts, any store bought baked goods, chips, etc.- you get the point.

This might be the biggest, most important step you take in improving your health. That being said, we realize it’s a huge step for a lot of people. But your dining options are still enormous, even after cutting out processed foods. Creativity in meal planning, along with embracing the positive impact it will have on your health, will make cutting out processed foods more than worth any initial sacrifice you may feel.

Try to not eat anything from a package. Labels and ingredient lists generally mean that it is not food and your cells won’t recognize it. When you stop eating processed food, you start becoming much healthier.

Check out our recipes page for ways that food can be amazingly tasty without being processed!